L'Uomo Vogue january 2012 - Jacket and undershirt, Alexandre McQueen

The email arrives suddenly, naming the location «Downtown photo studio, 6th Street and the Los Angeles River, made infamous by the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ song Under the Bridge» and time of the photo shoot. I pick him up at the Sunset Marquis and he looks tall, trim and elegant in simple jeans and t-shirt. His first words: “Do you have a cigarette? No? Please find me one”. We begin the ride charged with testosterone, real men, totally unconcerned with being politically correct, armed with cigarettes, whisky and club soda, talking about football, cars and his recent motorcycle trip. “I’m a Liverpool fan and You’ll Never Walk Alone is the best anthem in the world. The Reds have been my team since I was five. I played as a right winger, I was fact and a pretty decent dribbler, my left foot was crap, zero technique. I never could have gone professional. Viggo Mortensen, a great friend of mine, plays really well. He supports the Argentine side San Lorenzo and adores Messi”. The 34-year-old actor looks out the window, not minding the frustrating Hollywood traffic. “I’ve always loved cars, especially classics like the speedster, roadster and spyder models of the Porsche 550. At 4 years old I was already itching for my driver’s license, at 7 I was driving tractors and at 12 my father’s car. I have to admit that my love of motorcycles came later, though it overtook me with total, devastating intensity. I’ve just returned from a 6,000 kilometer trip with my father. He rode a Triumph Tiger and I was on my trusty BMW GS. We started from London and crossed Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia and Montenegro, then took a ferry to Taormina and did the whole Amalfi coast. I was surprised because in Italy you leave space for motorcycles on the road. You drive a bit fast but you’re cool, you share the road, not like here in America where they’d just as soon run you over”.

Fassbender never stops smoking, one after the other, nor does he stop smiling when I ask if his love of speed is one of the most immediate ways to feel free. “An excellent match, freedom and power. Horses and horsepower. Riding a horse at a full gallop is exhilarating, but a motorcycle lets you go where you want. You’re not closed in a box, everything around you is alive, the trees, the mountains, the sea. You’re in tune, you’re one with your surroundings and your machine, enjoying all five senses like you’ve never experienced in your life. For the trip with my father, I had two saddlebags for a wardrobe stripped down to the basics – two pairs of jeans, two pairs of shoes, flip-flops and a few t-shirts”. If he hadn’t become an actor, Michael would have opened a bar-trattoria, like his parents who for years ran a restaurant in Killarney, Ireland. “I’ve had some rough moments as an actor, though I’ve always had the support of my family. I lost a lot of gigs because I seemed desperate at the auditions. When you’re not working, you totally lose your self-esteem. It’s a frustrating trade if it doesn’t go your way. I have to thank my father, who always pushed me to do more; he was never satisfied with my achievements. Thanks to him I learned two very useful things for this kind of work: German, and discipline. I’ll always be grateful to François Ozon, who gave me my first starring role «in Angel, ed.«. He believed in me, and thanks to him I can now do what I’ve always dreamed of. Then came Steve McQueen, first with Hunger and then with Shame «not forgetting Tarantino with Lieutenant Hicox in Inglourious Basterds, ed.«. Working with Steve is always a unique experience because he doesn’t play by any book of rules about how a film should be made”.

With Shame Fassbender won the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival as Best Actor, while in the States the film has an NC-17 rating. “I don’t understand the problem with the nudity in the film. What’s the difference between male and female nudity? All men have penises, all women have sex, both accept masturbation as a natural need, yet despite all this people are scandalized by sex, while violence is accepted no problem. What are the criteria of judgment here? Is it possible that we can’t do anything to challenge this censorship? The real problem of the main character in Shame isn’t his obsession with sex, but rather his dependency on a certain mental scheme, an addiction that damages his own life as well as those of the people around him. Sex is a primitive instinct, an often amazing physical experience. Falling in love is something else entirely – you establish a deeper and more complex connection with the other person. Sex can be a thousand things: serious, playful, strange, thrilling. Having sex on the set is stressful, because you need to establish rules and limits. I generally ask my partner if I can kiss her, or caress her back, breasts, crotch, in order to understand how far I can push things without looking like a maniac. On the screen, female nudity is not only accepted but encouraged. My mother complains that men always have their pants on”. He hears a song on the radio and hums along, then talks about the important role that music has played in his life. “It was my dream. I started acting at age 17 because I realized I would have failed as a musician. My favorite band back then was Nirvana, now I listen to a bit of everything – blues, country, rock and hip-hop, especially from the ’90s: 2Pac, Notorious B.I.G., Dr. Dre, Public Enemy, Jay-Z. One of the most interesting musicians of the moment, and I would dare say of all time, is Jack White. I also love Muddy Waters, Tom Waits, The Chieftains”.

His love of film was inherited from his mother, Adele. “She’s a fan of the American school of the ’60s and ’70s – Coppola, Lumet, Scorsese, Cassavetes, Kazan, Brando, Montgomery Clift and obviously Paul Newman, although her favorite director is Rainer Fassbinder, perhaps because of the stories my father tells about an alleged family relation. My hero as a kid was Chevy Chase. I loved The Six-Million-Dollar Man, Superman and will always have Kim Basinger in 9 ½ Weeks burned into my memory. Still chatting, we arrive at the Downtown photo studio, where I continue my interrogation, moving from his favorite part of his wardrobe – “I love scarves and hats – my grandfather’s cap is still my most prized accessory, I always bring it with me” – to the place he keeps the plaques and statues of the 16 international awards he’s won «including the British Independent Film Award, Irish Film and Television Award, the Volpi Cup, the Screen Actors Guild Award». “I keep them at home, in the bathroom. That way when I sit on the toilet I can contemplate them. Don’t get me wrong, it’s really great receiving awards, an honor. But I try not to live in the past, preferring to think about the future, what I’ll do next”.

In the end we talk about exactly that: Prometheus, the prequel to Alien, directed by Ridley Scott; Twelve Years a Slave with Brad Pitt, once again with Steve McQueen; At Swim-Two-Birds, directed by his friend Brendan Gleeson, who stars along with Colin Farrell and Cillian Murphy. The first to hit the theaters will be Haywire by Soderbergh, co-starring Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum and Mathieu Kassovitz. He says goodbye reminding me of the motto of Eric Cantona – his second-favorite footballer – who refuses to keep any memorabilia around because he finds it sad to be mired in memories: “Move forward”, he says.